Chapter 271: The Very Reasonable Price of Adventure

James lowered the hand to his knee and turned his hat between his fingers. The waterdrip waited for its next fall while the amulets hung quiet and the drum outside finally fell silent.

Madame Zéphyrine stood in the white light with her hands open, a show woman who had just stepped off her own stage.

The grin crept back onto James’s face with no hurry. "Name me a fair price and I’ll pay it gladly and thank you for the privilege. But I’ll not swear to a price I’ve not heard yet, no matter who’s askin’.

Her expression returned in a single breath, the slackness gone and the smile flashing out like a blade drawn purely for show.

"Fair! Ah, mon capitaine, but the sibyl’s prices are fair like the sea is fair!

She plucked salt from the pouch at her hip and let it rain into the basin. "She takes what she takes, and gives back more than you thought to ask. Come, come. Let the water keep the word."

The drip swallowed the salt with a hiss, and every shell in her hair started clicking again.

James rocked his stool back on two legs, easy as if in his own tavern, though his eyes never strayed from the basin. "Well then, madame, that’s the fairness done. Now, how’s a sibyl to help three wayfarers find a thing that doesn’t want to be found?"

Madame Zéphyrine replied in the oldest fashion, taking a mouthful of cane spirit from the jug and spraying it across the lamp. The white flame roared up to the rafters, blue at the boundary, while her locks floated around her head as though she were standing underwater.

The bead in the basin jumped from its bowl, the shells flying up to meet it until together they drew a coast in the air, crooked and with a bay bitten out of it.

Mary tipped her chin at the coast in the way she’d size up a stranger’s blade, hunting for the dull edge.

"Well now, there’s a fine magic show."

A drum started outside, and every tooth and shell hanging from every cord clacked with it. The shadows of the herbs slid down the walls and swelled into a black jungle, leaves and all, with eyes among them.

The eyes blinked.

Mary tracked them with a slow tilt of her head, one hand drifting down to her pistol. "Plants with eyes, would ye look at that. It’s Port Royal all over again, except no one’s after sendin’ me a bill for the stare."

On the table, the little bones stood upright and clicked themselves into a hog no bigger than a cat, which trotted a stately route around the driftwood, snorting through a nose it didn’t have.

Bonnet had drawn his buckled shoes up under him on the stool, clutching his knees like a child at a ghost story.

His voice came out half a note higher than intended. "Delightful! Oh, madame, quite delightful! I must confess I hadn’t the faintest notion I should be introduced to a hog this evening. One does so like to be forewarned, but he is, I assure you, the very nicest hog."

The blue flame stretched into a face, old and seamed, with eyes like two drops of milk. It looked Bonnet up and down, sniffed at his coat, and spat a spark onto his shoe.

Naturally, and as expected, the gentleman pirate unfolded off the stool, flapped a handkerchief, and swept the flame a bow that brought his coat-tails brushing the floor.

His tone was nothing but courteous. "My dear lady, I do assure you that this coat was pressed in your honor and in yours alone! Should it have given offense, I shall be quite mortified. Quite!"

The face rolled its eyes and sank back into the flame.

Mary pressed her knuckles to her mouth, but the laugh squeezed out around them regardless, a short, rough bark that set the nearest shell clacking in alarm.

"Well, there’s a first for ye, Bonnet. Never in me life have I seen a woman turn down yer coat."

Then the second cup filled itself and began sliding across the table toward Bonnet, one patient inch at a time. He backed away, stool and all, until his shoulders met the wall, while the cup stopped a hand from his knee, still brimming.

Mary watched it come with sunny detachment. "Go on, take it, Bonnet, don’t be rude. Sure, it’s the only cup on all of Tortuga that comes lookin’ for the customer instead of the other way around."

"Mark, my dear fellow, I must decline. With the utmost courtesy, naturally! And a great deal of sincere regret."

James nudged the rim with one idle fingertip, gently, and the cup went slithering back across the table, sulking the whole way.

"Remember, lad, the lesson. First’s hospitality, then it’s a contract."

The shadows slipped back into the herbs as the water fell into the basin, the shells dropped in a heap, and the hog collapsed into bones with a clatter that felt very much like an apology.

Madame Zéphyrine laid one finger on the far end of the shell coast, and the show woman faded from her voice. "What you hunt, chéri, it sleeps. It sleeps on the big island, over the water. The sibyl, she knows the road, and she will walk it with you, oui. But first she must make ready."

The big island was Hispaniola, its French shore only a wee trip away.

"Where about, madame? The big island’s a mighty lot of coast to be searchin’."

Her fingernail trailed away from the coast, inland, and the lamp seemed to lean after it, wanting to see. "Behind the sugar, mon capitaine. Behind the planters’ roads, the planters’ prayers, past where the cane smoke dares to go."

Mary jerked her chin where the jungle had stood. "That’s a powerful lot of green to go hidin’ in, madame. Haystack the size of a county, and the one needle. How d’ye suggest we find it without feedin’ the three of us to every snake in Hispaniola?"

"Follow the hush, guardian of the door."

She cupped a hand beside her ear like a woman listening to a secret. "Where the parrots stop screaming and the frogs hold their breath, the old road lies beneath the leaves like a snake beneath a sleeper. It wakes for whoever carries the sibyl’s cord at the head of the line."

Bonnet’s hand shot up like a schoolboy’s, trembling slightly. "And pray, madame, what manner of company are we to meet in this green? I should so like to prepare a little conversation."

Her smile thinned, and one by one the shells in her hair fell silent. "Ha. The green is wild, chéri. Eat nothing it offers you, drink no water that runs warm, answer no voice that knows thy mother’s name. And your best coat, leave it aboard, the mountain is vain, and it will want it."

"My best coat? Madame, you cannot be serious. It is the only one I have that is pressed!"

Mary clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to knock the stricken look off his face. "Ah, let it have the coat, Bonnet. Every mountain’s got to want somethin’, and I’d sooner it wanted wool than one of us."

James set the hat on his knee and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs.

"And how long’ll you be needin’ to make ready, madame? We’re not rich in time, you see."

"One day, mon capitaine, then one night, not an hour less."

After all the riddles, those direct words dropped like a boulder.

Then she lifted her chin, and the oracle slid back over her like a cloak off a peg. "In that time, the sibyl must dress you for the green, so it takes you for its own and forgets to eat you. She will bury a hog’s tooth beneath the rock at low tide, she will bathe in rum and river water, she will walk backward around a hanged man’s boot. And she will sing your names to an egg."

Bonnet’s voice cracked on the word and climbed so high it nearly left the hut, his eyebrows rising to keep it company.

"I beg your pardon, madame. To an egg?"

"The egg, chéri, is the most important part. And no, I do not explain!"

She flicked his question away kindly and with utter finality.

"When the sibyl is ready, she will warn you, and you will know it."

Mary rose up, pushed off the doorframe and ducked out under the lintel.

"Aye, I’ll sleep light, then, ye’ll no’ catch me with me boots off."

Bonnet bowed to the lamp, then paused in the doorway to give the room beyond it a smaller bow still, on behalf of the river. "Good night to the lamp, madame, and, if I may, my warmest compliments to the river. I do sincerely trust the quarrel is mended in short order, these things so seldom improve with sulking."

"But of course, chéri. The river will hear of it. The river hears everything."

Bonnet followed Mary into the dark.

James put on his hat, and the witch’s hand closed around his sleeve before he could follow the merry band outside. She put a braided charm into his palm and folded his fingers over it, made out of red thread, small white and dark shells, a bone bead, and a single tooth.

She stepped in close, and heat came from her like camphor and burnt sugar, a banked stove with the draught left open. Her bosom squeezed against his arm and her hip found his thigh, accidentally and not at all by accident. The bells at her ankle gave one small, bright ring, and her lips lay against his ear, near enough that the whisper was more warmth than voice.

Then she instructed. "Wear it against the skin, mon capitaine. In the bath, in the bed, and in front of every pretty one who begs you to take it off. It must learn you."

She slipped it over his wrist and pulled the knot snug with quick fingers.

James turned his wrist in the lamplight, and his grin came up wicked, his voice gone lazy as rum poured over warm stone. "Madame, I’ve been bound by governors and hangmen, trussed like a goose by the King’s navy, and not a one of them ever bound a knot half so sweet."

"Ah, chéri. The sibyl bounds many knots. And some of them, bound me in return."

She patted his chest twice, and the grandeur returned.

"Go now, mon capitaine, go! Before the lamp, she tells your friends she kept you!"

James stepped over the ash and salt, and the door pulled itself shut behind him as the white light in the window went out.

Bonnet brought his lantern, which now burned with a cold white light no oil flame could produce, and the land crabs scuttled out of its way. "James, my dear fellow, I have never in all my days been so frightened, and I do not believe I have ever been so happy. Is that not the most extraordinary thing?"

"Aye, well. Usually there’s more shootin’, lad."

"Don’t ye go encouragin’ him, James. He’s quite bad enough already."

Ahead, the lamps across the swamp glowed through the dark, and beyond them the Fortune’s lights. A day and a night was a short stay, even at the oldest rock in the Caribbean, so James put his hat and walked on, the charm silent against his pulse.